Muse

You're listening to the Ralph's In-Store Radio Network. Thank you for tracking your dirty shoes all over our store and making it even dirtier. Are you a movie buff? Well, we've got a Blu-ray of Daddy's Home 2 that we're selling for $35 for some reason. Daddy's Home 2. The only piece of physical media that all grocery stores have. This is the story of Uncle's Day.

I thought I'd do it to the home.

Uncle's Day is right around the corner. So come on down to Ralph's. You don't want to be the only one at the Uncle's Day party without Uncle's Day sauce.

Be sure to check out our dirty clearance bins by our terrifying bathrooms. The only thing we sell back there is expired Bloody Mary mix and some pregnancy tests that have the character Para Norman on the box.

Please stop putting baby teeth in the Coinstar machine. There's an urban legend going around that you can trick the Coinstar machine into giving you money by putting baby teeth in it because pennies are the same exact size as baby teeth. That is not true. We hired a security guard to protect the Coinstar machine, and we've given him a gun. If he thinks you put baby teeth in the Coinstar machine, he will not think for a second before shooting you. Also, he refuses to wear glasses because he thinks they make him look weak.

T-B-T-L Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

It's Friday. Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. Ah! There's nothing classier than boring jazz music. I am here to tell you.

There's nothing in your playlist but Spooky Party, the Beetlejuice soundtrack, and NPR podcasts.

Ooh, we could listen to one of those! I have Michelle Norris interviewing Errol Morris. Don't worry, they address it.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Friday edition of TVTL. The show just might be too beautiful to live. It is our turn. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Things are going to start happening to me now.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia. Oh, la la! Where it is an absolutely picture-perfect day here on this Friday. We are in the last gasp of summer, and each minute of days like this feel extra special because we here in the Northwest know what is around the corner in a few months. But for now, it's just absolutely spectacular. Only one problem, and that is there are a number of flies buzzing about in the studio. Let the fun begin. Because I haven't quite figured out, by the way, I had a drop related to flies. Get out of here, you flies. I meant to play before I got to letting the fun begin. Although it was kind of fun swatting at the flies. I feel like Mickey and the Sorcerer's Apprentice. but the thing is that there's no climate control in here, so I have to have this one sliding door open, but it doesn't have a screen, and it's just a free-for-all for flies and the occasional yellow jacket coming in here. So I have a fly swatter with me, and you may hear me thwacking at various things throughout the show. Just know that that's all part of the plan. It's how I get in the zone here on episode 4033 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. That's when we play that drop. I went to a Rudy's yesterday to get my hair cut, so... You paint your bald spot? What bald spot? You know what that means? I've got a story. We will talk about it. Also, we'll finally get to the story about Pike Place Market in Seattle and the fight about who gets to use the name Pike Place Market.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Oh, and speaking of things in Seattle, I'm going to be a thing in Seattle. Later, today, going to the baseball game, and I'm taking an Amtrak from, like, just down the hill. An Amtrak stops near where I live and goes to near where the Seattle Mariners are playing. Get on the magic carpet and ride. And then tomorrow, it does the trip in reverse. This is special. This is special. I am like, I'm oddly and irrationally excited about the idea that I may have train service between here and the beautiful city of Seattle, Washington. We need to talk to a beautiful man here. He's the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

Oh my God! He unmuted!

Their grace, their splendor, and all that intricate rigging, he is Andrew Wall. She's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I hope you plan on getting yourself a newspaper. And I don't mean reading the newspaper on your phone or tablet. I mean getting yourself a newspaper so you can kind of trifold it and sit on the train and read it the way newspapers were meant to be read. Newspapers were meant to be read.

at a diner, on a train, or over coffee on a Sunday morning.

Taking the Long Island Railroad in from Beacon, New York, to the city in 1976, and reading the paper on your way in. You snap it. And being dressed, I imagine being dressed basically like Ned Needlenose Ryerson. I know that's the second Ned Needlenose Ryerson reference this week, but that general look that Tobolowsky has in that movie with the sort of fedora and the brown briefcase, that person is reading the newspaper on the train going into the city to go to work.

Leg crossed at the knee, right foot sort of dangling, and you do the snap thing, you know, when you've got to turn the paper, you snap it, and then fold it backwards. I got pretty good at that.

Over years of public transit newspaper. I actually, Andrew, have been thinking a lot about newsprint this week and have a stack of, I believe it's Willamette Weeks here that I pilfered from the lobby of Becca's apartment building. So I have been trying to get the, well, getting the house ship shape here is, for now anyway, kind of an impossible task. But this, the Madrona Hill Studio, also known as the Madrona Hill Studio where I am, is, I'm trying to kind of spiff it up and make it nice because I'm working in here now, and it, you know. So it's got some big windows that my dad and I took out of the house. And then, by the way, windows are very heavy. Like, I know maybe that's not news to people. That was news to me. Like, these windows that I'm looking at right now are probably, like, I don't know, four foot by eight foot, maybe? Maybe some four foot by seven foot. They're, like, really huge. But they're a window. I don't know. How much could it weigh, Michael? Ten pounds? And we got these windows out of the main house and brought them over. My dad was like, there's no way we're going to be able to install those. And I was like, what? We're two burly, healthy, muscular men. Well, one of us is. You are, Dad. And he was like, no, you have no idea how heavy those windows are. And we ended up having to build an entire crazy scaffolding. And then when we finally got the window up into place and we're settling it, I've never heard my dad swear more. he was like he went to a place of fear that i didn't know he had because what he knew was if we didn't get this window seated into the windowsill that we had framed out like if anything went wrong we were both going to tumble down this little small kind of embankment with 400 pounds of glass crushing us yeah right so anyway that's what i'm looking out of right now andrew and the thing is it was very dirty and dusty over the months of construction and so the other day i thought you know what, I'm going to get out here and I'm going to go and clean the windows, which I did. The problem is, and this is something that I learned when I was a ute, I wonder if this is what you were doing in Ohio too. After you spray like Windex or whatever window cleaner and then you kind of wipe it all down, if you use a paper towel, that's all well and good, but there's always going to be from certain angles as the sun hits the glass, streak marks, wipe marks. And the only thing that reliably gets those wipe marks off is newsprint that's you know I know people

who swear by that I uh have never tried it it doesn't make sense to me I always use paper towels

and and see I used paper towels and Andrew if you could see I wish I could actually photograph this because it would be you would then as a fan of cleaning and as a person who hosts an entire podcast around it I think you would come over to this side of the street because I sprayed these windows down with Windex and I clean them with paper towels and there is some sort of chemical film that gets left behind that you only see from certain angles. At least that's what's happening here. My dad, when I was a kid, taught me like you get a piece of newsprint, you crumple it up and then you go over the dry window afterwards and that's when you get everything off. Then the window is perfectly clean. Now, I went down to Calama, Washington to the little grocery store there and said do you have any newspapers and the woman said no we have no newsprint it's the weirdest thing she goes my friend died recently and I couldn't find their obituary in a newspaper I had to go online I was like well this got darker than yeah I was here for window cleaning but okay how are you doing yeah I was you know do you want can I hold space for you like but um so I literally made a trip down there and half of the reason for going down was to get some newsprint and she was And then I started driving around the town of Calama, Washington, realizing I couldn't find newsprint in this town. I was like George Bailey showing up at Potterville. Like, what happened?

I know. I used to use newsprint or newspaper, I should say, or that type of paper to start my grill. I have a charcoal grill. And so I have one of those chimney things with the handle on it. You put newspaper underneath and you put the coal on top and then you light the newspaper. But the thing is, there's very little newspaper. I often will have a what do they call it spare change around like A homeless newspaper that you can buy for a couple of bucks. Real change, yeah. I think it's, in my defense, I think it's called Spare Change in Boston and Real Change out here, which is why I sometimes mess that up. Stop haranguing me. No, anyway, I always make that mistake. But now what I use, and I don't, I'm assuming this does not have the same chemical properties that you can use it on glass. Again, I've been hearing about this newspaper thing to clean glass and mirrors my entire life. It just seems so unsatisfying.

Because it seems like the newsprint would smudge onto, right? Doesn't it also seem like you'd have like a Ziggy, you'd have the remnants of a Ziggy comic in the corner of your window where he's looking at a sunset saying, thank you, universe.

To complicate things, most of the glass, like most of the windows and mirrors in my house are made of silly putty. And so I worry too about having the Ziggy kind of sticking there. But anyway, what I have now, the replacement for me in my house is packing paper because like, OK, like our broadcast Barry will send us coffee and there's like this brown, you know, packing paper in that and sometimes an Amazon package or whatever. So I save that stuff. I fold it up. Genevieve thinks I'm out of my gourd, probably because I'm out of my gourd. I have a little box where I take that paper, I straighten it all out and then I fold it up and I put it in the box.

You know, I just exclaimed, God damn it, Andrew, is because I have so much of that packing paper. Because, you know, when I moved up here, I went to the whatever store, the moving store, not really. It's some kind of a P.O. box place. But anyway, I bought like too much of that stuff. And I don't know what to do with it because I'm like, when am I going to move again? Hopefully not for a while. But I did pay for this. i mean i have like a thousand like i don't know fairly large square like a big two by four sheet of this paper like a thousand of them like it's heavy to pick up this roll of packing paper and i don't want to throw it out that feels wasteful but also am i going to store packing paper for 15 years until i move again like what am i going to do with it and you're saying i could

have used it to clean these windows well no i'm not saying that i don't know i use it like i use that as a replacement for newspaper style paper for again like starting fires which is i do that all around my neighborhood um and starting the grill or what have you but i don't know what is in the properties of a newspaper that does this streak-free glass cleaning thing and i don't know that the you know because this this brown paper we're talking about is slightly stiffer

you know it's thicker i've got some of the willamette week right here while you're talking I'm doing some experiment keep going

but I think it's you'd have to try the brown paper to see if that would be as effective as the newsprint

oh my god Andrew god this newspaper works like a freaking charm

well you already knew that though right you started by saying

well I doubt myself sometimes I'm going to do a side by side later today I'm skipping my trip to Seattle to do this project but I will definitely try the packing paper thing and see because they feel similar you know what I mean in your hand from a tactile standpoint I could see them I could see them serving the same function. But I'm just also just relieved that when I went over to that window and did this, I was the astrology section of this week's Willamette Week. What's in there? It absolutely—

Seriously, will you tell me what it says for Sagittarius?

I will right now. Hold on.

And also let me know if you can, if that's a super old newspaper or if it's from this—

No, I believe this is this week.

Oh, this Willamette Week. Or Willamette Week, as I once said to a farmer in the Willamette Valley as I was pre-interviewing him, And I could hear the conversation shift when I said, how long have you been in the Willamette Valley or whatever my question was?

This is this week's 9-13-2023.

Okay, good. Perfect.

Cover, Rise from Chaos. The political machines that for decades dominated Portland elections must start from scratch. Okay, that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about astrology. Sagittarius is me. Yes, my friend.

What are you, Taurus? I can't.

I'm such a Taurus. Last night on LiveWire, by the way, thank you to everyone who came out. It was a super fun night. And we talked to an astrophysicist named Serafina El Badri Nance and one of the things that she wrote in her book that I just loved and peace and love to our Astrologically inclined listeners, but she is a PhD in astrophysics And she says there's all these ways that we look up in the sky and we see what we think is certain kind of movement And it's that's not really what's happening or it's either an optical illusion or we're misunderstanding it Like when I look at the Sun going through the sky here The Sun is not going through my sky We are going through the sun. Like, we're going around the sun, you know? And, like, I understand that logically, but the way it feels to me when I look at it is, like, look at the sun. He's traveling through my little field of vision. And she said, also, we often think planets are in retrograde. They're moving in retrograde, but they're not. And I was like, does that mean Mercury is never in retrograde? Because I'm going to tell people they've got to stop using that as an excuse. Have you heard about the whole Mercury in retrograde thing?

Yeah, I mean, I've heard that phrase my whole time.

whole life and then coincidentally just recently on a podcast somebody actually explained what it means and i was like okay i'm gonna remember it this time and then i didn't i well what what i

took from the book was planets are not moving in retrograde we may think they are because of how we are our sort of mis-observation of the movement of the planets now we do have another astrophysicist our friend summer ash who listens to the show and in fact dm'd me and said are you seeing another astrophysicist on the side? And I said, never, Summer. You're our number one. So, Summer, get at me if I'm wrong about that. But the sense I had from reading the book was this idea of Mercury being in retrograde may not actually make sense from a purely astronomical sense. Okay, back to how the Sagittarius—

I can't believe I got—you really are a Taurus. I looked up your birth sign. Yes, that was just a random guess? Well, no, it felt like a somewhat educated guess, but I didn't know. That's why I'm sort of proud.

Because of the qualities of someone who's a Taurus.

No, I don't know anything about Taurus. I was just, I think that is maybe, like, we finally, because, again, I can never keep any of this shit straight. All I know is I'm a Sagittarius, and I don't know what any of the signs mean. I believe I'm a dragon. No, literally, I believe I'm a dragon. I need help. But anyway, so I, is that what, no, a Sagittarius is a horse on fire, right? No, it doesn't matter. I don't know what a Sagittarius is. But anyway, I know I don't know any of that, but I think it's just, like, from actually doing this show with you for 15 years, something has finally sunk in a tiny bit, and that you're a Taurus. Oh, and shout out to the listener, and I don't remember who said this, but somebody said, hey, listen, you're always getting Luke's birthday close. I think I always say it's like May 5th or 15th or something, and somebody said, hey, listen, my partner's birthday is the same as Luke's, and here's the way I remember it. I made up a word, May-th. It's May 8th, and that's right, right? Your birthday is May 8th? Yeah, good. And it totally worked. Just now, I was like, wait, when is Luke's birthday? I'll look up his sign, and I was like, it's not May-th, or it's not like May-th. I knew it was one word. I was like, oh, it must be maith, and I got it. So anyway, thank you.

Now, I thought that person was going to say, it's my partner's birthday, and the way I remember it is I have regular coitus with them, and they mean a lot in my life. So I remember these things, and I was like, I don't know if we can go there together, Andrew. See you in May. Sagittarius, is it ever morally permissible to be greedily needy? Are there ever times when we deserve total freedom to feel and express our voracious longings? Andrew, this does feel like something about us getting together.

Yeah, sure.

I say yes. Now, here's what I'm a little confused with. Oh, this is old Rob Bresni. Rob Bresni is still in the astrology game? I don't know that name. I don't know much about astrology, obviously, or even the writing about astrology, but Rob Bresni has been writing the astrology column that has been—it was in The Stranger when I was a teenager. So I think Rob Bresni must be the go-to astrologer for alt-weeklies.

Oh, wow. He looks like an astrologer. Because that's the only— flowing hair and little glasses

I've like, I just have seen that name of the like three astrology columns I've ever looked at in my life, this being the third, they've all had the name Rob Bresni associated

Have you ever seen what he looks like? He looks like the look I was going, he does not look dissimilar to me in the 90s, I'm going to show this to you, he looks like a dragon with a horse on fire. Okay so, but here's what my question was, I'm

not sure the framing of this, in other words Who is Sagittarius Is it ever morally permissible to be greedily needy This is Rob Bresni writing He's asking a question right This is not Sagittarius asking the question This is the astrologer right I guess keep going Are there ever times when we deserve freedom To feel and express our voracious longings I say yes I'm guessing that's Rob Bresni saying yes I believe we should all enjoy periodic phases of indulgence Chapters of our lives When we have the right even the sacred duty to tune in to the full range of our quest for fulfillment. In my astrological estimation, okay, now this is God of the way, Rob Resney. Sagittarius, now we're talking to you, Andrew. Yes, thank you. You are beginning such a time now. You are beginning a phase of indulgence. Finally, Andrew.

That's what I was going to say. Oh, yeah. Talk to the cheese sticks and mini pizzas that I've been housing all week. Am I just now going to begin indulgence?

It is time for Sagittarius to finally play darts between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. Okay, Sagittarius, you are beginning such a time now. Please enjoy it to the max. I am coming to Seattle tonight, Andrew, I'm just saying. Yeah. You know, let's not rule out some pull tabs at Goldie's. Hey. Here's a tip for best results. Never impose your primal urges on anyone. Andrew, you need to stop indulging your primal urges on people.

Indulging them on people Is that what it says

How do you indulge onto somebody Let me back up and I'll just Give a little more context here Please enjoy it to the max Here's a tip

For best results, never impose your primal urges on anyone.

Oh, never impose my urges on anyone, okay.

Never manipulate allies into giving you what you yearn for. Instead, let your longings be beautiful, radiant magnetic beacons that attract potential collaborators. Interesting.

Okay, I'm trying to figure out what my longings are.

That you would impose. I don't think I know a human being on this planet who would be less likely to impose their primal urges on someone else. And I mean that as a compliment.

Thank you. Yes. In this climate. In this economy. I did forget. That is true. I didn't think about the implications of you coming up. I want to talk about our weekends a little bit here because you're coming up. Can I read Taurus, though? Oh, yeah, sure. It's shorter. Let me just say. Keep going. I have plans to go to the baseball game tomorrow night. And I've sort of been thinking like this is probably I feel like you used the word swan song earlier. Maybe not. But I feel like this is probably going to be my swan song on live baseball games this year. Maybe unless I can worm my way into a playoff game if they're able to make the playoffs. But like I've been to more Mariners games and then including the all star stuff this year than I ever have in my life, which is great. I mean, again, I wasn't there like 50 times, but I must have seen at least 10, I'm guessing about 10 games this year. And so it's been a whole, it seems like so long ago since I went to that pre-opening day little festival at T-Mobile Park. And you ran the bases with those Make-A-Wish games. I tried. They wouldn't let me. Itro tackled me.

My wish is to impose my carnal longings on everyone in this stadium.

I was at, coincidentally, I was at my first Bark at the Park Night the other day. We went to the game, and I didn't know it was Bark at the Park Night. I got to see a bunch of doggoes. It must have been fun for you. Yeah, it was. Terrible game. Just awful game. I watched it on television. It ended a friendship. Terrible game.

As you know, one of our friends is now blocked on the text chain for a one-word response.

Anyway, but anyway, all that is to say, so you say you're coming up to see the game tonight. I'm going to be at the game tomorrow. if you are after the game like here's my plan for tonight is I have this yard work that I've been working on I have this huge pile of sticks and leaves from when I hacked away at my hedges a while back and some of these trunks are like legit kind of firewood so I've been like kind of doing this just painstaking process of trimming the leaves and small bits off of this huge pile of leaves putting them in brown bags for pickup in November and then saving the burnable stuff and then burning a bunch of it at the end of the night so if you find yourself done with the game i'm guessing you're beelining it directly towards a watering hole but if you want to swing by and burn some shit with me um

we'll be that sounds fun that actually sounds like a much healthier like um i don't know why it would seem healthier because let's be honest in both cases i'm probably imbibing yeah some alcohol this is not a dry uh like sitting in like sitting around a fire at your house talking to my good friend andrew because we don't get to do that enough um like honestly that that just feels like a kind of a fun nice thing with friends that's social whereas being at a bar just kind of you know potentially power drinking before the inevitable trip to goldie's or something seems a little more sort of compulsive to me like i don't know if that anything i just said makes sense but actually that's a that's a that's a very intriguing and inviting offer so i may take you up on yeah

we'll just drop a text yeah i'll check in and i assume that maybe you'll be checking in with one Camaro Kev too

They've been checked in He's recovered from his lime scooter Incident of last week And I think is ready to Get Rip Roaring I actually pre-read the Taurus thing while we were talking It's very lame and I don't even think It adds very much comedic humor It's let's just say What they're saying What Rob is saying to me this week is whether or not you're a business person Don't let your skill at decoding riddles Distract you from tuning in into the new possibilities that will come floating into view.

Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. We've got to break this apart. First of all, it's just a given that you have a, as a Taurus, a Taurus, I don't know if I said that weird, it's a given that you are good at solving puzzles. Let's start with that.

I don't know that to be a characteristic of the Taurus. It might be, it might not be. I don't think I'm good at that, by the way, at all. I just, if something is a riddle to me, if it bedevils me, I just go away from it and towards something else like see power drinking comments like you know what I mean like I'm not somebody who's like you put me in a room with a problem and I'm gonna like solve it three different ways I'm actually a very bad problem solver yeah just like kind of bull charge through whatever's going on and then finds a problem that's less hard to solve I've

been playing that connections game every day by the way it's I have somebody emailed me and said that was stolen from somewhere else it was yeah somebody it was a British game show You

Like the New York Times basically is kind of recreated as an app for us to play. But, yeah, I was watching that.

It was called Connections, Isn't It?

So, okay. So let's just go with that. So problem solving is, let's just say it's an attribute, and it's a given. So then it says, but don't let your problem solving get in the way of what? Sort of a free-flowing jazz mind state?

Exactly. It's kind of a cosmic jazz. Don't let your skill at decoding riddles. So, again, take it as a given that I can decode riddles. Don't let that distract you, me, from tuning in to the new possibilities that will come floating into view. So, yeah, don't let my rigid Taurus riddle-solving abilities shut me off from the idea of maybe going to a bonfire at my friend Andrew's house.

Yeah, just let it flow.

I'm good at solving a riddle of how to empty my checking account. That's called going to Goldie's.

Yeah, also, by the way, I do charge for beer here now, too.

You should know that. And, you know, honestly, supply chain things and also just inflation. I get it. Actually, I have some. $50 to get your haircut at Rudy's now.

I ended up with some of your, what do I have? I have half a bottle of, like, tequila or something from hanging out with you one time and you were flying away. Yeah, and it's still there. I don't think I've had so much as a snifter of it. So, yeah, I'll charge you for that, too.

You might be able to snifter some of that. I love it. I leave this tequila behind after the thaw and then I'll be buying it back from you at a reasonable price. Exactly. That's pretty good. Yeah, maybe after we thank some donors, I'll tell you about my Rudy's adventure, which I'll tell you this, there's a couple people in the world who already know this story, Andrew, and I can explain why that is too. Hey, let's thank some of our daily donors. These amazing people are sending money in each month, or maybe they sent a big chunk of money in at one point. Whatever happened, it's working. We're here, we're doing the show, we're a small business. And we're supported by people like Eric Hamilton in Walla Walla, Washington. Home of the Walla Walla Sweet Onion. And now a number of amazing wineries and stuff. Walla Walla Washington has really come up in this game

That's I think a little foreshadowing from my music for your weekend I'll explain later

It's music from the one time New England Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe Who's from Walla Walla Washington Drew Bledsoe Whose injury Facilitated The substitution of a young kid out of Michigan Named Tom Brady

Yeah, well, it's so funny when your legacy is that you got hurt and jumps.

Right, when you're the Wally Pips. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Eric, thank you so much. Also, hey, look who it is. It's our friend Sheila Reeks of Ithaca, New York. Oh, it's gorgeous there. It sure is. Thanks, Sheila. Appreciate you. Jen Miller checking in from Fullerton, California. I drove through Fullerton recently. Is that also a county?

Or is Fullerton County in a different state? What am I thinking of?

I don't know, but I think what I realized as I was driving through Fullerton was, when Fullerton comes up, I talk about the fact that there was a Christian radio show that I used to listen to as a kid. I would hear on the radio in our household, and it was coming out of Fullerton, California, and Fullerton just sounded like a magical place to me. And I think that might be where Fuller Theological Seminary is, which is named for a person named Fuller. So Fullerton, I think, is a town. And this is, you know, probably neither here nor there related to Jen Miller. I don't know. Maybe Jen works at the college. Maybe Jen's never heard of it. But Jen has heard of TBTL and is supporting us. So thank you. Oh, look who it is. It's Heather Rood in Bothell, Washington. Andrew, you know, every time Bothell comes up, we say for a day or a lifetime because that's on the sign when you drive into town. I always thought that was pretty clever. I pulled off the road the other day, somewhere between here, where I am now, and Seattle, Washington. I can't tell you exactly what the city was. It might have been Nacelle? No, I'm getting confused. I pulled off of I-5 to grab a soda or something, and the town, whatever it was, said, Welcome to this town for a day or a lifetime. Oh. And I was like, well, we need to figure out who has the rights to this. because this has been a real Bothell thing for me, and now I see somebody trying to creep on their action.

Did it say anything about Pike Place? Yes.

I was throwing a fish for some reason, sitting on the side of the road in Raymond. Anyway, thank you to Heather. Thanks also to Daniel Patterson over in Aberdeen, Washington. Thank you. One of the things about living where I'm... I'm living now kind of, you know, right on the Oregon, Washington border, although it's not the Oregon, Washington border that people would think of. I am looking, Andrew, as I'm talking to you, I'm staring directly west and I'm looking at the state of Oregon, which is bizarre because there's a part of there's an area where Oregon kind of goes up the Pacific coast and Washington doesn't go all the way out to the Pacific coast. And then you got the Columbia River. That's the part that I'm looking at. But I have found myself now, for various reasons, heading up and down the coast a bit and going on the 101 and going through Aberdeen. And, like, I mean, I always just sort of go Aberdeen. That's where Nirvana's from. But there's a lot of really cool stuff out on the Washington coast. It's a cool place. So, Daniel, thank you. Matt McGillin is in Oak Park, Illinois. We love Oak Park.

Yeah, that's right outside Chicago, right? The Chicago land. Is that what you would describe that as or not?

And that's where one—don't stalk him, Matt, but that's where one Peter Segal lives. Oh, you can stalk him. Illinois, you know, he'd like it. He probably wouldn't mind the attention. He loves it. Light, a little light socking. Maybe you see him on the street, tell him, hey, I'm a TBTL listener. Matt, thank you very much. In fact, thank you to all of our donors today for making the show possible. We absolutely could not do this without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right, I'll try not to belabor this, mostly, Andrew, because I know at least two people, our friend listener Lynn and our friend listener Zach who were at Livewire last night heard me kind of mention this to the crowd as the show was about to start so in the interest of those two people not having to hear this story belabored twice I will just tell you that when I went to get my hair cut yesterday at Rudy's I got there the appointment was at 2 30 and I was there promptly at 2 30 was kind of having a pretty busy day obviously getting ready for Livewire and the person cutting my hair she got I would say she she wasn't in the Rudy's when I got there and somebody else said oh she'll be by in a minute at about 2 34 she walked in and said oh are you Luke let me show you where the chair is and as I walked behind her to the chair I realized where she had been for the last four minutes which was getting incredibly high on marijuana because she was like there was like weed smoke coming out of her clothing you know like it wasn't like uh it wasn't like maybe somebody had a couple puffs it was like she had just been somewhere like hot boxing and the thing that I know about weed is there are some people who become actually more detail-oriented when they are high and I actually know people in my own life who swear by this they're like yeah I'll have I'll get a little bit high and it will actually really help my concentration and my focus so i didn't immediately assume that this was going to be a bad situation but i was kind of like all right we'll see how this goes and um i when i was sitting in the chair there was music playing actually i think it was do you know that band the blow no i don't think so um it's a it's a singer her name i believe is kayla maricich maybe i'm a fan of hers but um there was a song playing i think it was by the blow and then the person who's about to start cut my hair she just looks over there's one other chair in the entire rudy's where it's next to us where someone's getting their hair colored and the sense i got was the per the the person who was doing the coloring and the person who was getting their hair colored they all worked at the rudy's like everyone in this store except me worked there i think part of why people go into the industry is because when they don't have any customers then one of the other people there will do their hair for them so they all knew each other and at some point like right before she starts cutting hair she looks over the other people she goes this music makes me feel like I'm underwater I was like all right well this somebody seems to be feeling the effects of whatever they've been doing let me just start by asking Andrew would it be at all something that

was a little unnerving for you if if the person who's about to cut your hair had clearly just been having a probably significant amount of marijuana honestly no I thought this was going to be more

of a story of the smell of a person and if you don't I don't mind that smell but if you don't like that smell or if somebody came in from smoking just like regular cigarettes and they you know there's a different smell when somebody i'm sort of shifting this a little bit here um but when somebody smokes a cigarette like a kind of a on the sidewalk next to you i don't mind the smell of smoke in the air usually but i have now especially now that i haven't smoked in like five or six years that smell of it clinging to somebody's clothes talking about tobacco here is a very different smell that i didn't realize at the time that i was smoking and that it really puts me off i don't know that i've had that with somebody smoking weed but i could see that so if this is a story about somebody smelling bad as somebody who smokes marijuana myself now i never want to do a job like i i only do it well i guess recreationally but like i i'm not somebody who'd be like hey i'm just gonna take a couple of puffs and then go to work like that does not sound fun to me i kind of have like pretty pretty rigid boundaries around that stuff like i wouldn't want to be high in the middle of the day and then coming back into work that does not sound fun to me but it also doesn't i i would not i don't think i would have raised an alarm for me if somebody was like oh yeah i'm high and i'm cutting your hair because i would assume that you're somebody who does this a lot and you know it's not like you're it doesn't it usually does not impact like your motor functions

the way drinking might or something that was gonna be my next question was would it be and and maybe they are i just don't know very much about weed honestly i was gonna say would if the person was about to cut your hair if they were you saw them in the back of the store doing like three shots of of jmo before they came out to cut your would that give you pause that it's hard for

me to imagine that as much but and but you know what the weird thing is on both of these but i mean i think especially the weed one is like and this is a weird thing to say but i'm just being honest as i'm sort of processing this in the moment it's sort of like it's like if i see somebody who's at work and then they've just like smoked a joint or something i'm surprised that in this day and age like if you're doing that you wouldn't just vape or something anyway just for the smell but anyway and then like smoke a joint when you get home I mean it's a different thing but like during the day there are more discreet ways of doing it but honestly if you were somebody who was like smoking a joint and then doing my hair I would almost trust you not as a barber but as a weed smoker like sort of feel like well it's not the first time this person's done this it would bother me if like I was going to a party and people were trying pot for the first time and doing my hair like okay that would be maybe weird but it's kind of like there are certain people who navigate life with you know with a little bit of a of a marijuana buzz on and that doesn't bother me so much it would bother me if they're driving or operating heavy machinery but no i don't think it would raise an alarm but it sounds like the proof is going to be in the pudding here i've

talked too much well uh yes uh just to sort of to skip to the end in a way i mean the haircut was actually fine i think i like the haircut oh okay good i think that this person did a did a really good job there was the moment where she asked me what what sort of clippers do they use on the back of your hair, because, you know, the way where my hair is like the kind of like, I don't know what you'd call it, the back and the sides are a little shorter than the top, and I know it, I know exactly what clipper is, it's a number four guard, so she goes, what do you usually, what do they use, I go, it's a number four guard, and she goes, okay, and then she grabs the clippers, and then she puts a guard, and she goes, it's a number one, right, and I was like, nope, number four, she goes, that's why I double check.

Oh, I thought she was going to say, gotcha, okay, she was just double checking, I don't

She was, well, she was going to do it with the one. She goes, oh, yeah, yeah, that's why I double-checked. She puts the four on. Again, the haircut itself was totally fine. What was interesting was she had an ongoing conversation with the two people next to me, and me as well. She was a very pleasant person. But she had this ongoing conversation going with the other people that I think both worked at the Rudy's because they had a very kind of familiar way with each other. and they were talking about horror films and they were talking about and and talking about movies and who was in that thing and why it's that one where the it's the it's it's a family goes cave diving but then they're trapped in the cave with a shark she goes and it's got this guy that i really i've always got a had a kind of a crush on and three different times during the haircut andrew she stopped the haircut to go to her iphone to look up a person she couldn't remember from a movie she was discussing with the people next to me, which felt like very high-person behavior to me. I don't know what high-person behavior is, but it seemed like the kind of thing where I think under normal circumstances, if you're cutting someone's hair, you keep doing that as opposed to stopping what you're doing to figure out that it was John Corbett who was the dad in the movie where the people get trapped in the cave diving with the shark.

John Corbett. I don't know. You think that being high. Well, see, I don't know. I'm asking you. You're the high person. I don't know. Dead ass you high. I just don't, you know, it could just be. I think that's, listen, usually when I'm getting my haircut, I have at a time when I'm not running to do something else. You pack your days, as everybody knows, more than I do. So if this person is friendly with me, hi or not, taking that out of the conversation, one of the only out of hundreds of haircuts that I've had at Rudy's across various different states, one of the only bad experiences I ever had was when some guy was cutting my hair and he was ignoring me but, like, talking loudly to his colleagues but, like, totally not including me in the conversation at all. And that really sucked for me. I did not like that. I like to hear that this person at least was kind of including you in the conversation. I like that. i'm trying to think if i'd be irritated if they stopped to look at their phone it really depends if if they're if if me and this person are sort of talking or like who's that person who's that person like hold on i'm gonna look it up i don't know if that's high behavior and i don't i don't think it would put me off but it's just like there are so many um there are so many factors involved there you know about like kind of the tone of the room and and whether or not i'm in a hurry i guess and and as you've already said of course i'm most of the time i'm in

some kind of hurry and yesterday was was no different because i had things scheduled out Thank you. pretty sort of pretty tightly um and so that part was like so she goes i hope you don't mind like the third time she grabbed her phone she was like i hope you don't mind and i went huh like i didn't say i don't mind yeah which felt like very direct by me like i didn't say like actually it would be cool if we could just kind of speed this along but i also didn't kind of like let her out of no problem just keep looking up people from movies i like the way that is the most if anybody wants

know kind of the the pacific northwest has a reputation for being sort of like passive or passive aggressive he said i just basically laughed three times and that was very direct oh you were being sarcastic okay because i could i mean honestly i wasn't saying that to bust your chops because i'm sometimes like that like me just like somewhat turning a cold shoulder for me feels like i just it was an act of war and so anyway go ahead yeah no i mean it did feel like i was

really letting her know but i also realized how much i was not letting her know at all but just the fact that i didn't fall over myself to say no no look up more movie characters please actually you know what go back outside get like a comically large bong and do your thing and come back um like i said the the the good news in all of this is that the haircut was really good like the i was very happy with the outcome she was very detail oriented and did a good job so all all's well that ends well but i guess it you know some of this really goes to my just my inexperience around weed i will tell you this if if she had been slugging back shots i would not have been stoked about that because i am a drunk and i do know what that does to people yeah yeah that's not the thing that's not what you that's not what you want of the person who's operating a sharp implement around

your the lobes of your ears kind of thing yeah i mean in college i mean i think i wrote like literally every paper high you know like i just sort of feel like that was my thing like to sit down and do it i would smoke so there is something and there's cutting hair i feel like is a creative process as well as just like straight up difficult labor i think but um there is something that like it doesn't just answering honestly i don't think i would be bothered by that but i mean it just again it depends on how many um other factors are involved you know and again if what this person's

tood is like the tood was great this i actually really liked this person all around and um would go back to them for a haircut maybe on a day when i'm not like i have like an exactly 20 minute window to get to get in get my haircut and get out of there i i'm glad you brought up rudy's again

because um and i'm not saying this just because i want to be right but i'm legit interested to know if rudy's have different prices in different areas because you mentioned that you were booking this online and it quoted you like 56 bucks or something i'm like it's always around 40 for me i went online immediately after the show and i'm like okay let me just pretend to book an appointment here at my usual place and it was 42 which is more than it used to be i remember old man walsh remembers when it was 35 bucks for a cut but it is what it is but did they charge you is it is it that much more in portland to get your hair cut well i'm still a little confused

what mine ended up being was like 42 bucks and i think i tipped like 10 bucks so then it was like 52 bucks but but um when i had been initially trying to make an appointment like while i was we were doing the show yesterday i was also kind of like trying to set some stuff up i swear to god the number was like before tip was over 50 like it just said here's i think it might have been like almost 50 like could it have been even 57 and i wanted to ask but again see previous comments i was in a bit of a rush i wanted to sort of ask i didn't want to seem like a cheapskate was like Where I was like why are the prices different there? Ergo, I'm annoyed at what this costs, but I did want to try to figure out a non Cheap cheapskate way of trying to figure out why are there seem like the different prices all I can imagine is because My sense and maybe this has changed now my sense is the way that place works is the people cutting the hair work there and they get an hourly wage and they get tips and as opposed to other salons where a person rents their chair, right? So they're kind of an independent contractor. They're a small business, and they just happen to work out of a salon, and so they can set their prices whatever they want, and their clients will pay that because they like their work. That's not the sense I had with Rudy's, but I also noticed yesterday that I swear to God, because they'll go like, which stylist would you like to see? And there'll be a whole list of names. I just go, first available, right? Like I'm not particularly, by the way, Becca, when I was telling her about this yesterday, because I went back to her house to take a shower and get ready for the show, and i was telling her how the person was pretty high and she was god it's a different experience the way you get your hair cut than the way i do like she's got a person it's three hours they like it's a it's one of the strongest emotional relationships probably in her life is this and i'm just kind of like next available but what i noticed when doing that was different um i guess you'd say stylists had different prices they charged for the same I don't know.

Short haircut and that may I don't know if that means that They're more senior and they're getting paid more So somebody's been there longer there the whatever lead at that place And so therefore they get paid more by Rudy's which means Rudy charge Rudy's charges me more Because I don't think it's one of those things where those people are just You know Independent contractors. I don't the point is I don't have an answer to this riddle Andrew which makes it such a bad Taurus

Well, the thing is, you do have an answer because they charge you the $42. I think it was – I don't think – I mean, again, I've exclusively gone to Rudy's for a long time now. It doesn't mean I know everything about them, but I've never been charged more depending on the person who's cutting my hair. And like I said, if I looked it up online and it said $42 and they ended up charging you $42, I think it's probably consistent. It was probably just a hiccup in the system when you were booking it.

I mean, I'll tell you this. I'm looking. Rudy's, Portland, Selwood. This is where I went. And it says, first available booking or choose a stylist. So Ashley G, $52. Ivy, $52. Katie, $52. Wendy R, $47. Alexa, $42.

Interesting. Okay, that is different. Yeah, no, I've never. Like, I'm with you. I always just say, you know, actually, that is not true. I used to always say, you know, whoever is available is fine. But then for most of this past year, I had a kind of a regular stylist or a regular barber. But then and she has this little dog that she adopted near the time. I think maybe she had just gotten this little dog. Oh, I can't remember the dog's name. I wish I could. It's right on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, she adopted it like a couple of weeks before she cut my hair for the first time. So I always like there was something just nice about the consistency of going in and having a rapport with the person. but then she went on vacation for one week or something and then it just everything fell apart from there but uh yeah i don't know i haven't seen that inconsistency in pricing on my end yeah i'll

get to the bottom of it next time by the way i will probably continue to go there that's the thing

well you got a good cut and you they charge you the 42 right so yeah no i was yeah luckily i think

the person who cut my hair was on the on the the more standard end what it appears to me is that there's a standard price and then there are a few people that for some reason are it's 10 bucks more And my guess is that has to do with seniority of some kind, but at least down here.

But the weird thing is, is if you are a customer who just says first available, but there's a variable in price, that seems cool.

And I think the reason it was showing up 57 is because it's 52 and then there's probably about five bucks of tax. So that's what I think I was seeing the other day. But anyway, let's let's move off of this fascinating topic and on to a more fascinating topic, which is this fight between the people that throw the fish at the Pike Place Market and the organization that runs the Pike Place Market. If you've ever been to Seattle or even just watched a football game with unimaginative producers, you've seen the people throwing the fish at Pike Place Market. is there a more like is there anything maybe other than the space needle is there anything you can think of that is a more hackneyed go-to visual representation of you're in seattle than

the people throwing the fish i mean the the space needle is obviously number one which will kind of come into this conversation as well i think the the fact that you said visual is important because i was about to say oh and if they also throw nirvana song underneath it like that's huge which is just like especially galling because you just know that kurt would hate that shit so much

I don't think I thought of that, but you're very right.

Vives and I were at a U-Dub football game a couple of weeks ago, I guess it was the season opener, and they were playing like a Nirvana song for a second. By the way, you said that right. Congratulations. What did I say?

You said U-Dub with the correct emphasis. I'm proud of you. You're becoming a real boy. You're becoming a real Husky, Andrew. That's right.

I always remember a friend. I never knew that I said it wrong until Mike Frizzell, rest in peace, said something, and I never quite got it. Then you and I talked about it.

It's such a small thing, but if you're a U-Dub person, you know where the emphasis is, and you just did it perfectly.

Nice. Well, look at me. All I needed was the disillusion of the Pac-12 to get it right. I don't know why I said that. I'm off. Anyway, yeah, it always galls me and vives, too. We're just kind of like, oh, Kurt would love this. Yeah, this is nothing Kurt Cobain would like more than rooting on the Huskies.

i'm just i'm just picturing him in like a daniel johnston hi how are you t-shirt and just like a pink mohair cardigan like sweater just kind of like standing in the like in the tiee club just being like bow down to washington yeah i have a lot of thoughts about that that are very rude

that i don't think i should get into now we should talk about bow down to washington or kurt cobain as a husky i have something i don't think we should get into it now we can schedule it for next week if you want i don't want to hurt your feelings a lot of my friends are huskies or husky fans genevieve is you know a husky by way of work and there's pride in that

but i we're her chosen family andrew i have

to tell her like during the game i'm just like i don't know what it is like when i'm in these stands at a husky game at the you know as a gift from the university of washington good seats like you know like i do not want to be here's this yeah i do not want to be in your ass is going to be in a jackpot it's me but like i don't know if i would feel this way about all college sports but there's something specific about all the signifiers of huskies football fandom i dislike And I feel bad. And this is where I shouldn't have brought that up. Yeah, I mean, the bow down thing I hate. I don't like that, by the way. I'm not super into Huskies as a dog. Sorry for all the Husky lovers out there. Like, there's just everything about, like, the hand signal. The W. The W hand signal.

By the way, that's new. I bet we weren't doing that in the days of like Vince Weathersby playing, you know, running back for the Husky back in the day, like the the the Joe Jarazynka days.

We were not doing that for the record. There was one. And I guess while we're here, I'll just say it. Genevieve, I think during this conversation at the game, which I'm saying quietly because I don't want to be rude to the people around us. Right. I'm not I'm honestly I'm not there to be a hater. And I did appreciate being able to see this game on a beautiful late summer afternoon. but Genevieve starts scrolling back she's like well let's look at the old Husky logos from the past there's one from like 1937 where it's like a Husky wearing a sailor cap and it's kind of growling a little bit do you know that one no that one I was kind of like well maybe I can I can get into that a little bit maybe but generally speaking like all the cultural signifiers of of of the of UW football like it just makes me cringe and I realize like I kind of don't end up rooting for them and I feel bad because I always root for my friends teams if I don't have an interest and then i don't have an interest it's not like i'm some oregon duck fan or something

you know well i if we can for a moment make this uh a conversation about college football i think first of all i'm not as for somebody who went to the u-dub and grew up really really into husky football i'm not particularly defensive of it or oversensitive about it you know what i mean like i think bow down to washington is kind of dumb i don't really know why i don't know if maybe the bow if that's supposed to be like a reference to a dog like bow wow oh wow or little i just don't it just it might be it might be about little bow wow or little romeo i don't know but like yeah that i've i've never liked that part of it and and the i here's what i think about college football is if you went to a particular college and you were into their football team or you were into the experience of being at that college and being an alum from that school it's something that's like kind of to a small degree part of your identity or a thing that you know you just remember fondly then everything that happens kind of is like fun and makes sense and that's when we do the push-ups after the like every time we sack the quarterback then everybody gets a paper sack and you know punches through it like whatever every school's got their own like weird thing and if you didn't go to that school or if it didn't mean something to you when you were at that school it's totally dumb and i think that's just across the board now because becca's family they're all like Oregon Ducks I think her like great-grandfather Ebenezer founded the University of Oregon who knows like it's and they're you know they got all their little stuff and when the games were on they got their shirts on and if they we were to go to the stadium with them it'd be you know there's all these there's just all that kind of hand signaling and whatnot that goes with every single school and it all seems dumb to me unless I'm at Husky Field and then it still seems kind of dumb to me but less dumb if that makes any sense

sense because it's my version of the dumb well and maybe part of this and like the thing is i'm so far away from this now but you know when i came here there's a rivalry between uh the u-dub the u-dub i'm trying to say it right that's good you did it just as long as here's the only indubitably indubitably anyway between them and wazoo washington state university here and like i'm somebody who always roots for the underdog and like listening to like seattle sports radio

Not in this case. I mean, you're literally rooting for the Cougar.

Yeah, the under Cougar. I always root for the under Cougar. No, I don't know. And so maybe there is because of the dynamic between the two schools and then me listening to a lot of local AM radio that is like very Husky centric and sort of seemed. And again, I love Danny O'Neill, but his, you know, his love of the school and the cockiness around it and the condescending attitude towards the Cougars. With WSU. Yeah, WSU fans. I think that maybe that start and also like now we're just getting too far into this like you know our friend Durs who's you know a Coug fan and went there and has some school pride and also like again they're just they're just God I mean they're Couging it now with the conference thing I mean it's just they're just like born losers and some of it is their own fault and I don't even really care about this shit that much anymore anyway. but um there was just something so kind of cocky about the u-dub sensibility that i also kind of was turned off to that and then And like, oh, I was going to say Durs would be like kind of like we'd go to watch the Apple Cup somewhere where these two schools face off. And he'd like, look around this room. He's like, all these people who are maniacs about the UW didn't even go there. He's like, they're just like they're just like regional people who are clinging to this, the purple and gold thing for some reason. So I don't know. Maybe maybe some of that is still in me. But generally speaking, yeah, the culture around UW football specifically doesn't really appeal to me.

If you dropped me down from space and for some reason into the state of Washington and were like, which narrative do you embrace more? It would, of course, be Wazoo, because that's like the ag school. Those are the, you know, a lot of, you know, like you said, they've over the years, they're just they're smaller and scrappier and on the other side of the mountains. And the UW is in Seattle and there's all this tech money and certainly a lot of people that are. It's weird because the UW fans suck in a way that's different than the Wazoo fans. yeah they all suck but they all suck in different ways yeah but like the u-dub fans are like some guy who made a shitload of money in some kind of dubious investment scheme and he's got this huge boat and he's sail gating he's out there in on lake washington like that's a guy i'm not down with and then the wazoo guy is a dude from medical lake washington who uh is driving like pulling a trump flag to the tailgating outside of um the field in pullman and that's like a thing i'm not into and i'm generalizing here greatly but i'm saying that the bad representation of the fan base of both teams is bad just in different ways weirdly oh yeah i mean i mean quite literally

i mean it's funny did you say medical washington i don't know if i medical lake is just a town

that's out near like it's near spokane right a place where that guy might be from and ironically

doesn't believe in the vaccine like their former head coach got lost his job during the pandemic because he said he didn't his for religious purposes wouldn't take the vaccine he's catholic the pope approved it like it was just and he's now suing it's just like those are the so that's why i say that like whatever feelings i have about the u-dub i think i can pretty easily separate out from any feelings i have about wazoo now because i think that i mean i'm not rooting

for anybody anymore honestly so i think the takeaway here is i think the fish tossers should be allowed to use pike place when they sell their fish rub at like you know mel's market or whatever So basically what the argument is between the Pike Place Market Development Association, the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority, which is, I guess, the organization that's supposed to—I mean, that is the Pike Place Market, the collection of all the things and the real estate and stuff like that, and then the people that throw the fish. And I guess the people that throw the fish are putting Pike Place, which the Development Authority claims they have the sole rights to use. The fish throwing people are putting it on some products that they're selling. And so the the Development Authority has filed a petition asking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Well, actually, the fish throwers are now asking for the trademark to be canceled for the Development Association. And the Development Association is suing to enforce the trademark against the fish throwers. And the fish throwers are saying, look, man, we're not selling. I'll try to find the exact quote from their attorney saying that they are not trying to sell this stuff like far and wide. They said that they've put it on a couple of things that are being sold in a few places. But it's a pretty here's over the years. We've sold our cocktail sauce and our tartar sauce to metropolitan markets. and, you know, local little mom-and-pop grocery stores around here. This is a spokesperson for the fish throwers. He also downplayed the scale of the off-site product launch. We're in some QFC grocery stores, he said. I mean, it's never been some nationwide scheme. So the argument from the fish throwers is like, we're just selling some shit around here in Seattle. Leave us alone. And even the person who's the representative of the Development Association, it's kind of funny. They're basically, actually, you know what, sorry, this is this is the this is the fish market person i'm getting a little confused here one of them said this is nothing personal you know we think we own the name pike place fish market and unfortunately they think they own the name pike place fish market so how do we figure that out

i guess that's the fish throwers so well yeah i mean and again i'm going to repeat a little bit

of what you said here but just to like maybe with more clarity as a tourist my brain is really

scrambled today no no i'm not trying to step on you but no i this is this is how i view it as i read about it in the seattle times a couple of weeks ago and there's one i think especially ironic twist so you have a place called pike place market right and it's it's where a whole bunch of different vendors work and they all they all have various names or whatever one of our listeners of course has a has a place in the market exactly but then you have one of these one of these vendors is a fish market and literally they are called pike place fish company there's no issue with that they've been there forever like

you say it's one of the most famous icons of seattle when seattle is shown on national television is what do you show you show pike place fish company no issue with the name at all but now it's 2023 businesses expand they want to sell things online or distribute somehow and so they're like yeah we're going to do this we're going to set up a warehouse somewhere and sell some of our goods what is the name of our company it's pike place fish market and then this this you know group that has been created to protect the brand of Pike Place Market says well you can't do that you can't sell things from a warehouse that is not here and call it Pike Place Fish Company it's like but that's our it's our company it's our company name and then this is the ironic twist is Pike Place Fish Market the company the vendor the people who throw the fish was created in the 1930s this development association was created in 1973 like come the f on also i feel like and by the

way good thank you that was a clear explanation of this we've gotten today although there's only been two of us but mine was bad mine was very bad so thank you for that i think i talked about you

i think i shat on you dub so much that you had to rush through it i do blame you for this whole

thing but like the other thing too is if you're if you are the if you're the development association it's only i mean all like the fame of the pike place fish throwers aka the pike place fish market the fame that that brings to your overall operation it only redounds sort of beneficially to the entire operation in other words if you didn't have these people throwing the fish i mean god bless everybody else who's there particularly magpie mouse studios but like that's the big draw that's why everyone goes down there that's why it's going to be on cbs television as they're playing Jeremy by Pearl Jam when they actually they're playing in Detroit this week but you know when they come back to town that'll be what's that's what's gonna be on the football broadcast like I'm going hungry

when they're playing Temple of the Dog to bounce back into Thursday night football

like in other words it's this is the let's just say that the Pike Place fish market the fish throwers let's just say that their tartar sauce becomes a runaway hit and it's you know sold in grocery stores all over the country and some people are just like walking through a store in um in in you know i don't know what wheeling west virginia and they grab a a tub of this pike place fish market tartar sauce and they love it they put it on all their fish and then they find themselves in seattle someday and they're just like oh pike place i should go down there it's just a positive for everyone like the the more popular the pike place fish throwers get and their stuff gets the better it is for and by the way as far as and i'm this would be the slippery slope argument from the development association would be what about uh the vape shop and they want to start selling pike place vape flavors and now that's the brand

like i don't know that's just a different thing but i mean that's basically why they're trying to hold the line here you're right because they're there they are the brand protector and they don't want it watered down but and i just sort of and i know we don't have tons of time left in the show but like i i alluded to the fact that the space needle is in a similar situation the space needle while it's the the i think most recognized icon of seattle outside of frazier um

it is you know a private goes tossed salad scrambled eggs then it goes free and then

frazier then the space needle coming up fourth but uh it is a private you know it is a privately owned piece of property and the rights to the image and likeness and name space needle are you know privately handled and so if you're a company and sometimes i will see like i'll pass a a truck i just passed a truck the other day just a simple pickup truck that was like you know seattle slab jacking or whatever and they had like kind of a simple outline of their of their logo and it showed the space needle i was like the space needle doesn't know about that Because if they did, they would sue your ass because they work so hard to protect all of the branding around that and also make money off of it by licensing it. And, you know, I don't like that. I mean, I guess legally it's sound, but I think that's kind of ridiculous as well. But, I mean, that's what it is. It's about these organizations just wanting so badly to hold the line against their city icons, but they're also this, like, privately held shit.

And so that's where all the money is now. I mean, I'm sure the Space Needle makes a lot of money off of tourism. Certainly, it's not cheap to go up there. But like, I would, I don't know this for a fact, but maybe Space Needle is a bad example, because they have this big physical location that probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people go through during a year. But like, in a lot of cases, sometimes there's not even a they're there anymore. It's just the branding. I don't know, I can't give you a great example. Marilyn Monroe like there's no Marilyn Monroe

anymore but there is the branding of maryland monroe and there's a lot of money in that you know or you know there's so we live in a world now where there's a lot of there's just yeah a huge emphasis on making sure you own the the right or you protect your right to the branding of something

because that's really where the money is now yeah like i wanted to start a football team and call it the washington football team right because there isn't a washington football team anymore but apparently i'm not allowed and also i don't know anything about football i'd like you to consider

Andrew bowing down to Washington I refuse how about a little music for your weekend before

we begin the weekend my friend yeah nothing's easy with me is it um I've been going back and forth and back and forth on what I'm going to play for you I don't I I actually do think things are easy with you but now I'm curious about this music well I'll set this up there is a band um That was recommended to me via the Twitter like app Blue Sky, which I've really been enjoying. It's starting to like more and more people are starting to come there, but it's been more of a slow build and the communities are starting to like kind of form. I felt like the the threads, which is very similar, was like drinking from a fire hose from the very first second. And I just have been sticking with Blue Sky and I've been appreciating it and enjoying it. And you know who's on there, but our former video editor, James Napoli, who we worked with at American Public Media and one of my favorite people. And he tweeted out that there's this band called The Rat. No, it's not the it's just Rat Boys out of Chicago, which is a name that I immediately thought Luke is not going to like the name of that band, Rat Boys. And I don't think their music sounds like Rat Boys, but they're allowed to name themselves whatever they want. I guess they've been around for a while, like a decade or something, but they have this new album out called The Window, and it was, Luke, I foreshadowed this, it was produced here in Seattle by Chris Walla, the famous...

Hey, Chris Walla, sure, one-time Death Cabber, signer of our friends, The Lonely Forest on Transatlantic, I think was his label?

I believe so, yeah. And so anyway, this record I think maybe has a slightly different edge to what their music used to sound like. This is my first exposure to them. And the music is like, this is where I'm making things complicated. They have one song here that is just like straightforward, almost poppy punky music that is probably my favorite song on the record, but I don't think it represents the record. I think the record itself is a little bit more nuanced, and it's got even a little bit of twang in it. So I've been going back and forth. Do I play my favorite song, which is sort of an outlier, or do I play the song that I think, first of all, has the most listens on Spotify and also probably represents the band better? I'm going to go with option number two here to give people a sense of this. You know what, though? This is our show. We own it now. I can come back next week and play the other song. Nobody's telling me not to.

No. Honestly, we are. You're not telling me not to, are you? Well, if John and I get together, we can outvote you.

Yeah, I know. We got that operating agreement. All right, here it is. So I'm going to play this song. Again, the name of this band out of Chicago is Rat Boys. This album is brand new. It's called The Window. And I'm going to play track number four called It's Alive. And I'm going to play it for quite some time because I think it takes about 90 seconds for the chorus to kick in.

Outside my window The birds dance along I sit back and take it in Like some sort of medicine Slow, feeling the wind blow again To the walls, I fixed something I can't see Oh, it could be anything So close to a close call again Freaking out I pray to the sky above I highly, highly recommend people check out this record.

They contain multitudes. It's called The Window by Rap Boys. And now let me just... make sure i got this that's the sound that sounds more like the record overall i think the song that you were particularly drawn to because i really like what you just played yeah no i really like

this too there's they have one song that is just like much more spare and has a little less twang in it and has distorted vocals so it sounds more like almost um almost like pixies-esque or something and i love that song that i love this song that i'm describing but i feel like what you just heard is more representative of their sound overall i really enjoyed that i will be

checking them out the song that i would like to suggest this week is uh it's uh it's a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a blog you're a taurus puzzles uh-huh sure it's another one i can't solve uh the band is called frog and i found this song because my daughter the only music know her that i trust well except for you andrew i like your taste too uh put it on some new september playlist that she made and i was like wow this song is it's it it's a little mournful it's a song basically i think from the perspective of someone who loves someone who's with someone else and they're basically saying if you ever want to run away i'm down the song is called you know i'm down now there is very limited information about the band frog online like they have a website but it i clicked around on it you just can't get much info they seem like a band i think they're from queens i think they've been around a couple for a while i think it's like a couple of guys uh they don't seem overly obsessed with promoting themselves um the album is called count bateman and i've been listening to some other songs on it's um it strikes me as sort of like it's it's it's moody it's almost like got a little bonniver type of thing but like it's like for people that think they like Bon Iver, but they want it to be hipper. I don't know if that makes any sense. A lot of the songs sound like they weren't fully on the microphone when they recorded it, which doesn't sound like a real kind of ringing endorsement, but I really liked it. I was listening to a lot of this record Count Bateman today and enjoying it. But the song that I wanted to suggest is You Know I'm Down by the band Frog. I'm going to play it. If you don't

mind i was just kind of looking at their um band page on spotify and um it mentions that this came out in 2019 on their freak folk opus count bateman i don't know if you use the term of freak folk luke but the thing that i that stood out to me just looking at the numbers here is the song i am down has over a million listens outpacing everything else in their catalog by exponentially it is it It is like this one song must have just like really grabbed everybody's attention, but then everything else seems like a total sleeper.

Yeah, but the record, the Count Bateman overall, I mean, I listened to probably like four or five tracks on it. I actually really liked all of them. So anyway, this is, it's kind of a vibe. It's probably one of these songs where you've said to me, Andrew, the listeners will go, why do they pick the music they pick? But I was enjoying this this morning. The song is You Know I'm Down, and it's by Frog.

I had your mom make up the tires, you'd be my mother, but for another.

I wish I could live a thousand lives, cordoned with a thousand wives. I sold a bed with golden lies, turned you to the center of a thousand thighs.

Call me when you're feeding down Call me when he's not around Call me, let's get out this town

You know I'm down All the songs you like are southern I don't know when we'll see each other Be my lover Look for each other Listen to the apples in stereo Rocking Pete and Paul

Alright, so there you go. That's Frog. Like I said, it's kind of a whole... I can't even describe what the vibe is, but I was vibing with it this morning.

I love that. Oh, good. Oh, I love it so much. I also think that music is...

I like a good Apples and Stereo reference, by the way.

I was going to say, yes, Apples and Stereo. I wanted to let it get to that lyric. That's an album title, right? I know it's something that you like, but is Apples and Stereo a band or an album? I think they're a band. Oh, okay. I feel like I only know them because of you, maybe. So that's why I laughed there, because Apples and Stereo...

stereo for some reason i don't know exactly what it is but it made me think of you yeah i like it

sometimes well this is complicated um but i like it when a band i'm listening references a different band that i listen to yeah somehow you feel kind of unless it's paved well i like it a lot too but a lot of times let me put it this way you better hope you don't get referenced as a band if you're in a pavement song smashing pumpkins they're elegant bachelors they're foxy to me are they foxy to you oh andrew that has me thinking you know what i'm gonna listen to on the am track today oh yeah nice while you're reading gold sounds yeah yeah crooked rain crooked rain right see if i can sneak no i just mean the song gold sounds on repeat okay staring staring out the west side of the train possibly drinking a nip of something i snuck on or got from the bar car and just listening to listen to that song that's a whole mood okay uh the listener suggestion is from listener Scott, who's actually suggesting a couple of songs, says, first song suggestion, I came across a weird band out of L.A. called Thumpasaurus on Spotify. The algorithm recommended Thumpasaurus after playing Luke's, after Luke played his Queef Turkey song. The band has a really offbeat sound. I would suggest either Strutton or Space Barn from the album Thumpverse. So I actually kind of am slightly familiar with Thumpasaurus, Andrew, because this song, Strutton, which I think is the one we should play, uh blew up on tiktok what it really to me sounds like i mean it's it's sort of a catchy song it feels novelty to me but in case listeners haven't heard i do think it's kind of an on a sunny friday it's not the worst vibe it it seems to me like um somebody listened to a lot of primus the thumpasaurus the thumpasaurus sound is very bass forward and um and uh it's just kind of a catchy little silly ditty that i listened to well at least i heard it in many videos when it was blowing up on tech talk so by way of scott i thought we would play it for the listener the other thing is scott says my second song suggestion is hollywood baby or dumbest girl alive by 100 gex from the album 10 000 gex now 100 gex is a obsession of mine of late maybe not obsession but fascination are you familiar with the 100 gex situation i think they're called hyper pop is the Jean and it is wild. I'm almost tempted to have you play a 100 Gex song just to kind of like.

Well, maybe next week. Again, maybe next week we'll play.

I mean, if people didn't like my selection this week, although they're wildly different sounds, Hyperpop is just, it's the most intentionally overproduced music you've ever heard. Like, again, it doesn't sound like a thing I would like, but I do find the three songs I've heard kind of listenable.

Good, I want to hear that. Save that for next week. We'll put a pin in that. Yeah, definitely. And I wanted to, you mentioned, if I can, I just want to shoehorn something in here, if you don't mind, and it's so tangential. But you mentioned things blowing up on TikTok. As you know, I don't spend any time on TikTok, except when somebody sends me a specific talk, they want me to tick. But I kind of caught wind of a couple of these ticky talkies using that song, Dumb Ways to Die. oh yeah ways to die yeah and it rang a bell to me and i kind of just i didn't pay attention to it for a while but then it started to like i was like wait i know this song do you know as somebody who's on tiktok luke yourself quite a bit and knowing this song that is all over the place dumb ways to die that people are you know mixing and remixing and using for their videos do you know the original i finally got there the origin of that and the reason i know that song is because it was from an Australian PSA back in like the, I want to say, maybe 2015 or something like that. And we talked about it on After These Messages. It was a PSA made, I want to say in Melbourne, to raise awareness about safety around railroad tracks. That's the origins of that. And then it's made its way all these years later to TikTok, where apparently it's blowing the F up.

I mean I would say it definitely did I am so familiar with that meme I think it's probably kind of crested But it was huge Huge on TikTok for a long time And I had no, to be honest with you I was never a huge fan Like I don't know why there are the TikToks Like the meme-ified songs that really work for me And I'm like looking forward to seeing them And then some of them I'm just like Really? This is again? That was always in the kind of like Okay we get it, camp But it's interesting to know the origin of it Because I could have never in a million years

told you where it was from yeah and that's it i'm not advocating for it or against it it's just like this very twee i mean it's of its era a little bit right it's a very kind of twee song with like a female vocal sort of singing about all these silly ways people die but the psa ends up being about like you know be careful around railroad tracks weirdly and they just wanted to go viral to get the message out there but it was just i just went on this weird journey because i was hearing this on like you know people reposting things or whatever and then Amen.

Finally, I paid attention to it. I'm like, wait a second. What is that? And I pulled on the string, and for once in my life, it actually paid off.

Wow, that's amazing. The campaign was run by McCann. What is that? McCann Erickson. It's just a huge, it's just like Saatchi and Saatchi. It's like a really huge advertising agency in America.

Oh, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, and so they did it for this, I believe, Australian.

You'd think that there would be an Australian advertising agency that would come up with it. It just seems like you go all the way to New York City to get McCann Erickson to develop your Dumb Ways to Die railroad safety campaign.

Yeah, so you're looking it up, huh? So you can confirm, right? And it was Australia, right? Yes, you're absolutely right.

All right, well, from one TikTok song to another, we're going to go out with a little. And this takes a while to get going, Andrew, I think. So you could probably start it now. And then we'll just say thank you for listening. We are going to be back here on Monday with more Imaginary Radio for you. So until then, please have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. And Gil Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

side of the side. Strut so hard with the strutting side. Strut your way into mine and prove it's strut so fun. Having a strut don't cost a dollar. Take my dog, don't forget to call. But I'm the dog and I like your smell. Can't help you strut so well. And baby, you got a head start. Strutting your way into my heart. Take your hat off, make yourself at home. Have a stay at night and strut on home. Day one, I'm in love with you strut. Day two, I'm in love with you strut. Day three, I'm in love with you strut.

Guess what?

it's a cosmic mix of the action of the 90s combined with the exploitation films of the 70s but with modern touches it's hyper violence but it knows that it is it's a little bit tarantino it's definitely a little bit michael man it's kind of a cosmic gumbo it almost moves to the beat of jazz power out I'm going to go ahead.